They did penalise half the field – they penalised the half that didn’t use DRS.
Not the teams’ fault, but they should still have received a time penalty equal to, but no more than, the time they gained that others didn’t.

It’s not as though DRS is automatic. The drivers have to press that button to activate it, and they’re not allowed to do so when yellow flags are shown. They all know (or ought to know) this, so ignorance is not an excuse.

The stewards have bottled out of penalising these drivers because there are too many of them to be politically convenient; the same as when multiple cars were speeding under the safety car at Valencia in 2010. Clearly, in F1, there is safety in numbers.

“There was a delay of 1 minute from the display of the yellow flags until the message appeared on the official message system.”

Therefore, the drivers weren’t notified in time. Since they were also in a green flag zone, it is entirely understandable how they would not have recognised the use of DRS was prohibited at that moment.

and if a marshall was killed do we blame the fia for a software glitch or a driver for using a device that drasticly reduces their control of the car whilst under yellow flags and drs use is not allowed?

At the end of last year there was a dispute if sebastian passed another car under a yellow flag and yet it was proved in the pooring rain that he judged the flag correctly. Keith even said at the time they are highly talented drivers and knowing the rules and identifying and knowing the difference between a yellow flag and a yellow and red striped flag at 200 mph is bread and butter to them. It was a perfectly clear day in china no excuses they all saw the flags they know the rules they would be responsible for any injury.

@calum: When the drivers has a green light down the DRS straight, why shouldn’t they use DRS? Do they have to get a written permission by FIA in each case? Come on, FIA should pull their act together, this isn’t god enough.

I would certainly hope that either the system is finally working again, or they look at what went wrong here (the late information and why a green light was shown on the straight) and I am pretty certain that next time it won’t be handled in the same manner @calum

Not quite. The drivers weren’t using DRS under yellows, they were using DRS under greens. However race control had disabled DRS everywhere… well race control sent a message that DRS was disabled and there was a big delay before the drivers would actually receive the message.

The difference is the drivers didn’t know that they werent supposed to use DRS.
The drivers used DRS in a green flag zone after the yellow, but FIA had decided to disallow DRS on the whole track as a result of the accident. The drivers cannot know this until they are notified about it, as it isn’t something they do every time there is a yellow flag zone somewhere on the track.
The notification was delayed by 1 minute, so the driver only knew they weren’t supposed to use DRS after they had done so.
It has nothing to do with how many did it, it is because it the failure was in FIAs system. The drivers could do nothing about it.

@danielc – I could see why maybe that would be the case, but under these circumstances I’m not so sure honestly: it would be terribly unfair for a driver to be punished for what was a fault of the FIA.